A guest post featuring crafts, activities, tips, snack ideas or other early childhood topics. (toward the end of the month)

Posts where I share what I have been up to with my preschoolers and/or early elementary children (including occasional highlight posts where I share how we used ideas that have been linked up here on Littles Learning Link Up).

Each week, I will host a link up, where you can share either what you have been up to recently, or old posts that may go with the theme. Feel free to link up more than one post.

Each week I will continue to feature a couple of posts from those that have been linked up.

I hope you will continue to share your wonderful posts, and I hope you will find something new to try with your child(ren).

It would be great for everyone to stop by and visit the other linked-up posts as well. Check them out, leave some comments, pin those that interest you. Let's make this a real party and socialize with each other.

What have we been up to?

In our homeschool we have been busy learning about the rainforest and Brazil. I decided to extend our stay for an additional week so we could have a chance to make some recipes from Brazil and have a celebration. Oh, and it is giving us time to catch up on some of our activities. This week we continued our unit on frogs. These days, the extent of our kindergarten unit usually ends up being me reading the books for the unit, and having Harold do his worksheets. We don't get a chance to do most of the activities included in the curriculum.

Moving on to co-op, I wanted to do one last snowman craft with the children. I needed something simple, and one that I had all the supplies for. There are so many cute crafts on my Chock-Full of Snowman Fun Round Up, but I was having a hard time finding one for which I had all the needed materials. So, I went searching on the internet. I found an adorable idea over on Crafty Morning. One of the aspects I liked about this craft was that it wasn't another snowman created on a piece of paper, as we had done the previous three weeks. Instead, it is creating a snowman out of a 3-section piece of an egg carton.

Isn't he cute?

As is the case with most of the crafts I find elsewhere, this Egg Carton Snowman was inspired by the one found, but it has a few tweaks from the original. I decided to forego glitter buttons in favor of pom poms, and I nixed the hat altogether. The other change was the kind of paper used for the scarf. The original uses wrapping paper. I was going to use felt, until I realized it doesn't glue together very well. I ended up using tissue paper strips, which worked rather nicely.

Here are the materials you will need:

(You may notice the eyes of the snowman are different in this picture. I had originally used black beans because I couldn't find my wiggle eyes. Thankfully, there were some wiggle eyes in our craft supply tub in the preschool co-op room. I was going to allow the children to choose between the wiggle eyes and the black beans, but I realized the black beans actually made my snowman look a bit evil. I quickly changed the eyes on my snowman, but it was too late to re-take the materials-needed picture. So, if you like the look of the snowman with black bean eyes (that sort of looks like coal, you know, like Frosty the Snowman has), then feel free to use them.

3-section strips of egg cartons (1 per child)

White paint

Paintbrush

Wiggle Eyes (or dry black beans)

Tiny Pom Poms

Orange Pipe Cleaners

Black marker

Tissue paper

White school glue

A Push Pin (I used this to poke a hole in the top section so the nose could be poked in easily)

I started out by having the children paint the snowmen one at a time, so I could supervise them easier as we have a couple of children who are a bit younger than the others. Older children could work more independently, so would be able to work together in a group to complete this step.

Okay, so I ended up having a couple of them work at the same time. One older, one younger)

We let the snowmen dry while we had snack, and then I gathered them all at the table to complete the snowmen. I had poked the holes for the noses before calling the children to the table. And the first thing they did was stick the pipe cleaner through the hole. Then we moved on to the steps that needed glue, which would be the eyes and the pompoms.

As I was walking around applying glue, I wasn't able to snap any pictures. But I figure that step is easy enough to understand. Then I had the children choose the color tissue paper they wanted and cut off a long strip. They laid it underneath the snowman's neck and glue was applied to the top section. The children then wrapped one side of the scarf around. More glue was applied, and the other side was wrapped around.

Then the children used the black marker to draw a mouth onto their snowmen.

Here are their finished creations:

Let's take a look at that review schedule:

We are currently reviewing Times Alive from Times Tables the Fun Way. Look for this review the second week in February. And Hannah has a new Language Arts Curriculum from Eclectic Foundations. That review will be posted the beginning of March. We are also reviewing two products that will be shared on the Old Schoolhouse website - Joseph: The Canada Goose, which is a storybook and art lesson book from How Great Thou Art Publications, and The Word Warriors Game.

Next week I will be posting my Valentine's Day Literature and Craft Round Up. If you have any posts you would like to be included in this round up, please contact me by leaving a comment or emailing me. You can find my contact info on my About Me page. The posts can focus on a compilation of Valentine's Day books, or a craft that was inspired by a book. Please no posts that do not include a book. Thank you.

I am trying to line up guest posts for 2017. If you would be interested writing a guest post for Littles Learning Link Up one of these months, please leave a comment or contact me via my contact info on my About Me page. I will need to have your email address so I can contact you. I am looking for posts that have to do with young children: crafts, activities, foods/snacks, tips, or other ideas. I am open to suggestions.

Now onto:

Littles Learning Link Up Features

On my last Littles Learning Link Up post, there were 8 wonderful posts linked up. I will be picking one randomly selected post to share, plus the top clicked-on post.

Don't forget to stop by other posts that are linked up. See what catches your eye, stop by, pin the post to a relevant board, and perhaps leave a comment to let the author of the blog know you have been by for a visit. I know I appreciate others commenting and letting me know they have read my posts, so I am sure others do too.

I would love to have you join in this week! What sort of activities do you do with your young children? Do you have some favorite activities you would like to share? I invite you to link up below. I will be pinning posts on one of my relevant boards, and I would love to feature some of the activities each week from what is linked up.

Please know I may share a picture from your post and link back to it, along with sharing how we used your idea in our school time. By linking up you are giving me permission to use a picture from your post. I will ALWAYS give credit and link back. Additionally, if you choose to try out any of the ideas with your child, please make sure you give credit where credit is due.

Linky will be open through Monday night, to give me time to check out all the posts and get the Features organized. Please take the time to visit some of the other wonderful posts linked up.

(Dr. John's xylitol sweetened candies are sugar free, don't contain artificial sweeteners, flavors or colors and taste just as good as their sugar sweetened counterparts. These candies are considered acceptable by those following the Trim Healthy Mama eating plan and are great to have on hand to resist your kids' leftover holiday candy. And, Valentine's Day is coming up! So if you're trying to go sugar-free this year, this is a giveaway you don't want to miss out on!)

Thursday, January 26, 2017

I know, I know, Throwback Thursday seems to be all about sharing pictures from the past, great memories that mean something to you, that you would like to share with others. At least that is how it appears to me. Throwback Thursday wasn't something I was participating in, and then I came up with an idea.

I thought it would be great fun and a help to my blog to share old content, but not just any old content. Each week I will share an old blog post from a previous year, any year, BUT it has to be from the current week (for example, something I've posted around January 26th, from any previous year) I will go in, edit the post if needed, add a pinnable image if I don't already have one, and share it on Facebook.

Last year I focused solely on review posts for the posts I wanted to share. It was fun remembering some of the review products I had forgotten about. This year I will be focusing on recipes I have shared in the past.

Would you like to join in? You do not need to edit your past post in any way, you don't need to create a pinnable image, though it couldn't hurt, in fact it will help your blog traffic to add quality pinnable images to your posts.Just go into your archives, choose a favorite post from this current week from any previous year, and link it up below. (If you don't have anything from this current week, it is still okay to link up with a post from a previous year around this time. And if you haven't been blogging for a full year, feel free to share any earlier post.)

Please make sure to share from the past as instructed above if you would like your post to qualify for the Featured Post. Most weeks I find that there is a wonderful post, but I can't feature it because it is a current post, not from the past. I love reading the current posts, if you want to share them. However, I am not able to feature them, because the spirit of Throwback Thursday Blog-Style is to share posts from the past.Thank you

I will be pinning posts to my appropriate Pinterest boards and will be randomly selecting a Featured Throwback Thursday post to share next week. Just a note, I will be sharing a picture from your post if you are selected as the featured post, but I will link back to your post. I will ALWAYS give credit and link back. By linking up you are giving me permission to use your picture in the post.

To participate, link up below. It would be great if you could visit several of the other posts that have linked up. Stop by, comment, and pin images so we can help each other.

If you would like to help spread the news:

Happy Throwback Thursday!Happy New Year!Thank you so much for joining in with Throwback Thursday in 2016. I hope you will continue to participate in the new year. If you are new, welcome! So very glad to have you here! I can't wait to get to know you.

Welcome to Tots and Me... Growing Up Together, where I share homeschool activities, crafts, recipes, and tips, both of my own creation and those I have found around the web. I also love to share reviews and the occasional giveaway.

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About Me

I am a stay at home mom. I have always wanted to teach, started college with a major in Early Education, but ended up staying home with my son (which turned into staying home with my 2 sons and daughter). Years later ended up with an Associates Degree in Human Services. Which helped me get a director's position at the Montessori I was working at. I am now staying home with my 3 young children. While my older children are off in public school we are homeschooling. I am doing what I always dreamed of doing, teaching!! I feel this is where God has led and willed me to be. I will be here to "Train up [my children] in the way [they] should go: [so] when [they are] old, [they] will not depart from it." Proverbs 22:6